Living Here in Allentown

Living Here in Allentown [Michigan Capitol Confidential]
"The 1982 beating death of Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American man employed as an industrial draftsman for a Michigan automotive supplier.
Chin's murderers were two laid-off auto workers who mistook him for a man of Japanese descent and thus - to their way of thinking - at fault for their unemployment.
The attackers accepted a plea bargain and had to pay court costs, but after using a baseball bat to slay Chin neither man served time in jail.


LaFaive and I reasoned that foreign automakers learned a lesson from this.
'The murder stood as a stark message to outsiders: you (and your investment) are not welcome in Michigan.'

Shortly after Chin's death, Honda - the world's largest manufacturer of engines - began opening their first auto assembly facilities in the United States. Some of the earliest ones went to Ohio, a state not too different from Michigan, but none have come here."